Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said her city’s port had plenty of room for improvement after being impressed by Shanghai’s Yangshan Harbor and its deep-water port during a visit yesterday, shortly before returning to Taiwan.
Impressed with the size of Yangshan Harbor, Chen — the highest-ranking official from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to have set foot in China — said the rise of the Shanghai port and other Chinese ports posed a challenge to Kaohsiung’s container handling ranking and that more effort was needed to improve Kaohsiung port’s facilities.
She said, however, that it was improper to compare the Kaohsiung and Shanghai ports because the two were different geographically and environmentally and had different functions.
Noting that Kaohsiung Harbor is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Chen said the Kaohsiung City Government would do everything it could to cooperate with the central government on any project that benefits the port, Taiwan’s largest.
“I hope Kaohsiung and Yangshan harbors can learn from each other and grow simultaneously through healthy competition,” she said, adding that Kaohsiung was an international seaport and could play host to international cruise liners for tourism.
Taiwan plans to add facilities in Kaohsiung to expand its capacity and to help the port compete with overseas harbors.
The plan is one of 12 major public works projects unveiled by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government in a bid to revive the nation’s economy.
The Kaohsiung Port was once ranked as the world’s third busiest container port but fell out of the top 10 last year.
Hit by the global economic downturn and a dramatic fall in the country’s exports in the fourth quarter, the port handled 9.67 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) last year, down 5 percent from 2007, Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau statistics showed.
In order to revive its global competitiveness, the bureau has launched several construction and dredging projects with the aim of increasing the port’s container handling capability by 2 million TEUs per year.
The bureau also plans to develop the port into a value-added distribution center and offer incentives to foreign shippers and warehousing companies to set up facilities there following newly opened shipping links with China.
Meanwhile, Chinese companies have begun eyeing investments in Taiwan, including the port, as Ma’s government considers easing restrictions on cross-strait investment.
On Friday, Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) chairman Frank Lu (盧峰海) told reporters that two Chinese companies, China Ocean Shipping Group Co (中遠集團) and China Merchants Group (招商局集團), were looking to invest 20 percent each in Yang Ming’s container berth project at Kaohsiung Port.
“Several Chinese investors are interested in a stake” in the terminals, Yang Ming president Robert Ho (何樹生) said on Friday.
Cosco and China Merchants “are the most interested. We have been talking continuously,” Ho said.
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
RSS